Tag Archives: FIFA

Jew of the Week: Andrés Cantor

World’s Greatest Sports Commentator

Andrés Cantor (b. 1962) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to Jewish parents of Romanian and Polish heritage. His grandparents fled to Argentina during the Holocaust. Cantor spent the latter half of his youth in California, where he played soccer for his high school team and edited the sports section of the school paper. After interning at the 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain, he officially became a sports journalist. Cantor got a job as a play-by-play sports commentator for Spanish-language TV in America. Soon, he became famous for his long and loud “goaaaaaaal” calls. Though he did not come up with it, he has been credited with making it world-famous. He first used it during the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, and introduced it to English-speaking audiences during the 1994 World Cup that was held in the US. By the 1998 World Cup, Cantor was featured making the goal call in a popular Volkswagen commercial (also in 2014), and the Telemundo network has since turned it into a ringtone. Aside from the goal call, Cantor is famous for his deep knowledge of sports and his excellent and insightful overall commentary. He was the main Spanish commentator for the 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games, and also did English commentary during the 2000 and 2008 Olympics, and commentary in both languages in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. He is currently Telemundo’s lead announcer at the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. He also hosts a daily radio show called Futbol de Primera, broadcast across 100 different stations, and has written a book, Goooal! A Celebration of Football. Cantor voiced himself in a 2014 episode of The Simpsons (see the clip here). In 1994, he was America’s “Sports Personality of the Year”, and has received an award from the National Soccer Hall of Fame. He has won a whopping six Emmy Awards for broadcasting. FIFA described him as one of the greatest sports commentators of all time.

The Mexican Rabbi Giving Out Free Kosher Burgers in Qatar

Words of the Week

Slowly and by degrees, science is being brought to recognize in the universe the existence of One Power, which is of no beginning and no end; which existed before all things were formed, and will remain in its integrity when all is gone – the Source and Origin of all… This sum total of scientific discoveries of all lands and times is the approach of the world’s thought to our Adon Olam, the sublime chant by means of which the Jew has wrought and will further work the most momentous changes in the world.
– Waldemar Haffkine, renowned scientist and “saviour of humanity”

Jew of the Week: Edgar Davids

The Pitbull of Football

Edgar Steven Davids (b. 1973) was born in Suriname to an African-Surinamese father and a Dutch-Jewish mother. The family moved to the Netherlands when Davids was still a child, and the boy grew up immersed in soccer. By age 12, he signed on with Amsterdam Ajax, a team known for its “Jewish” character. (This is probably due to the team’s origins in pre-war Amsterdam, which had a huge Jewish population and was then nicknamed “Jerusalem of the West”. Today, Amsterdam is still known by the locals as “Mokum” from the Yiddish-Hebrew word meaning “place”). Davids soon led Ajex to three national championships. He also led the team to the finals in several UEFA tournaments. It was while playing for Ajax that he earned his nickname, “the Pitbull”. Davids moved to Italy in 1996 and played for AC Milan and Juventus. His greatest success was in Turin, where he led the team to multiple championships, and was described as a “one-man engine-room”. During this time, he underwent surgery on his right eye (for glaucoma from a previous injury), and henceforth wore his trademark protective glasses. In 2004, he joined Barcelona and immediately changed the team’s fortunes. The struggling club suddenly went on a hot streak, winning all but two games in the rest of the season, and going on to dominate the European football scene for a decade. Davids timely presence has been credited with this huge shift in the club’s history. Davids also played for the Dutch national team in multiple FIFA and Euro Cups, twice being named to the all-star “Team of the Tournament”. In 2002, he was chosen to be one of the stars in a Nike commercial for that year’s FIFA World Cup. The premise of the ad was a “secret tournament” for the world’s “24 elite players”. The video was hugely popular (as was its music, a remix of Elvis’ “A Little Less Conversation”). Towards the end of his career, Davids played in England for Tottenham Hotspur, famous for having a large Jewish fan-base. After a brief stint back in Ajax, he later managed London’s Barnet Football Club, representing an area that is also heavily Jewish. It seems he grew closer to his Jewish roots throughout these years, and once remarked before a big game: “Although I don’t go to synagogue, I will say a little prayer…” In 2004, Davids was ranked among the FIFA 100 World’s Greatest Living Footballers. The 2018 FIFA World Cup kicks off today.

Words of the Week

Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people’s souls, when we all ought to be worried about our own souls, and other people’s bellies.
– Rabbi Israel Salanter (1809-1883)